Flemish ‘John Wick’-style action thriller ‘Paradise’ starts shooting in Antwerp

Bob Colaers’ John Wick-style Flemish action thriller Paradise has started filming in Antwerp, starring Said Boumazoughe and former Belgium and Tottenham Hotspur footballer Toby Alderweireld. 

Boumazoughe also conceived and co-scripted the film. 

The €1.6m project is being produced by Kobe Van Steenberghe and Hendrik Verthé of A Team Productions, the outfit behind Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah’s hit Gangsta movies, with Jamel Aattache’s Dutch outfit Aattache Films.

It has been pre-bought by Kinepolis for Belgium and Independent Films for the Netherlands; Amazon Prime has taken Belgian streaming rights. The Flemish Audiovisual Fund (VAF) provided €225,000 in production funding. 

Boumazoughe, who co-stars in Rupert Wyatt’s historical epic Desert Warrior, plays Suleyman, released from prison after a seven-year sentence. When he discovers his home in the Paradise apartment complex has been taken over by drug dealers and gangsters, his one desire is to ensure his mother stays safe, whatever it takes. 

Alderweireld plays a warden with further cast members including Clara Cleymans and Achmed Akkabi.

“It’s by the hood for the hood,” Boumazoughe told the international industry at Flanders Film Days, where the film was being pitched to  sales agents and festival programmers this week. 

“That’s why I am trying to make the movie, to let people know that not every guy in an apartment complex is a terrorist or a dealer,” Boumazoughe continued. “John Wick is an assassin. I am not playing an assassin. I am playing an average Joe who comes with a lot of guilt and shame. Why Paradise? It’s because we have an Islamic code which says the key to paradise is below the feet of your mother. If you take care of your mother, you will enter paradise.

“We don’t want to glorify violence but we want to glorify action in its purest form,” he added.

The film is reusing sets that were earlier seen in A Team Productions’ series Alter Ego.

“We are trying to show the world that with limited resources, you can still make a big action movie,” said Boumazoughe, who cited The Raid and Die Hard as further inspirations for the project. He hopes it will kick-start a new wave of high-concept Flemish genre films. 

Boumazoughe is also expected to have a role in Adil and Bilal’s next Gangsta movie. 

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